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My Students.jpg

These are some of the students from one of the classes I teach.  They are very accomplished.  I think I could put them up against most any painters around.  They weren’t always that way.  They lacked confidence when they started, but I have tried to teach them the techniques I have found that help me in my own work.  I want them to paint what they see, not what they think they see.  They look for shapes and values rather than trying to paint the whole object at a time.  I’m very proud of these people and the others not pictured.  I have seen many of them become very accomplished and award winning artists.

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Convertible.jpg

I’ve always loved cars.  As a kid I used to get the brochures from car dealers or cut out auto advertisements from magazines.  I spent hours and hours trying to draw them.  Now, decades later, I still love to draw and paint them.  If you look at my cityscapes you’ll always find them in the scene.

My favorite painting technique is to look for shapes of color or value rather than trying to do the whole thing.  I’ll see the window at the side which is white.  Then I’ll see sections on the hood that are the same color.  I’ll paint those in.  Parts of the car will have a very deep red, then others will have almost an orange color.  I paint the shapes the colors I see, and all of a sudden, the puzzle is put together.  It is a believable automobile.  I don’t blend the colors together, I just paint the individual shapes the colors they are, and put the next color right next to them.  It works great.  Try it!

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tools.jpg

I was an art student at the University of Utah.  My professor was Paul Davis, probably one of the top ten painters in the United States.  In one of his classes he asked us to go home and do a quick still life of something on four different nights.  The next day we would prop them up against the wall for a critique.  Most of the class painted flowers or scenes of their kitchen windows.  I just did tools.  On the last day he asked me if my wife locked me in the garage or something.  That’s the story of these tools.  Kind of a guy thing, don’t you think?

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Ancestral Home_1.jpg

My wife and I took a trip with our parents to Britain to visit the towns our ancestors were from.  We traveled all over England, through Wales, and into Scotland.  A very important village to my wife’s family is Steeple Ashton, Wiltshire in England where her Berrett ancestors resided.  We were given a tour of the town by a distant relative who still lives there.  This painting is the home of Robert Berrett, her great-great- great grandfather’s brother.  It still has a thatched roof.  I thought it was so charming I had to paint it.

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nupastel self portrait-1.jpg

This is an award-winning self portrait I did in nupastel.  Nupastel is similar to charcoal, but has a tighter consistency and comes in different colors. I sat in front of a mirror and drew this.  First I lightly shaded the whole paper.  Then I did a simple outline of my face.  I concentrated on the darker values, for example around my eyes and nose.  I erased away the nupastel on the areas of lightest value such as the highlight on my forehead and nose.  After that, I filled in the medium values.  The technique is very simple, but makes a dramatic finished product.

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canoe2_1.jpg

I’ve been an avid fan of the canoe for many years.  I’ve paddled down a lot of rivers and have enjoyed floating on many lakes.  One early morning in Utah I slowly crept up on a moose standing in the water.  On an evening in Idaho I watched a six-point buck walk to the water, look around, then bend down to drink from the lake.  I’ve caught thousands of trout, bass, crappies and bluegill while sitting in my canoe.

I have tried to portray motion in this painting.  The faces aren’t clearly rendered.  Ripples come from the back of the boat.  Reflections  of unseen trees are in the water, and the canoe and it’s inhabitants are mirrored below.  It makes me want to head out to the river right now!

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Main Street.jpg

I’ve always loved driving my car during rainy nights.  The reflections in the road are amazing!  This is on Main Street in Greenwood, Indiana.  You see the reflections of taillights and store fronts.  The white car in the front is illuminated by the headlights of the car behind it and the road reflects the back of it.  Red taillights give the sky a reddish glow and the streetlight shines, illuminating the stores on the left.

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glass_1_1.jpg

A few years ago I was asked to do a slide presentation of my art for a women’s group.  One picture showed  a painting of paint brushes in a mason jar.  A woman in the group asked me where I got “that glass colored paint?”  I had a hard time explaining that there isn’t a “glass colored paint.”

This still life is from my demo at my class tonight.  People tend to be overwhelmed when it comes to painting metal or glass.  I try to explain my method  —  don’t think of it as glass.  Look for shapes and colors.  Draw the shapes you see in the glass, then paint them the color you see.  They come together like a jigsaw puzzle and become glass.  I might mention that I do hardly any blending, but put down colors and leave them how I see them.